Luoghi fra memoria e oblio. L’assenza, la frammentarietà e la ricostituzione del testo urbano. Due interventi di restauro del secondo dopoguerra

This paper aims to reflect on the theme of fragmentation, expressed in its dual manifestation as a "fragment-insert," which thrives on aesthetic and historical autonomy from the text in which it is inserted, and as a "fragment-residue," to be understood in the "Vichian" sense, as a trace that can be traced, through a critical act, back to the more complex textual unity to which it belongs. The theme of urban and territorial fragmentation was addressed through the study of two restoration projects carried out in the Roman countryside after World War II: the reconstruction of the civic tower of the city of Pomezia, founded in 1938, and the intervention in the ancient fortified city of Pratica di Mare. The two restorations followed diametrically opposed directions: in the first case, there was a recovery of visual memory, in the other, the choice was made not to reconstruct what had been lost. The question of reintegrating the urban gap on the one hand, and the renunciation of any formal suggestion of reference to the distinctive element of the lost territory - which introduced a new version of the landscape -, on the other, are the terms within which the discussion was conducted.